


more wonders on earth

by ygrittebardots



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-09 00:17:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1961664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ygrittebardots/pseuds/ygrittebardots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ygritte doesn’t do crushes, and the sinfully pretty barista at Night’s Watch Tea & Coffee is not a crush. He’s a target. Or he would be if she ever managed to get more than two words out of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	more wonders on earth

**Author's Note:**

> Somewhere along the lines this became half modern UK, half modernized Westeros. Please just go with it.
> 
> Oh and apparently this takes place in 2013 or something because my brain is a year behind in pop culture.

“I mean, yes, but just _consider_ \- “

“I’ve considered it. I’ve considered it a lot. I’ve considered it every day since you first brought it up because you won’t stop _bringing_ it up. And I still maintain that a bear would absolutely slaughter a shark in battle. They may be slower and have fewer teeth, but they’re stronger and have the advantage of land and claws. Can we close the case on this?”

Dany clenches her jaw and Ygritte is momentarily afraid that she’s going to do that twitchy-vein-temple thing that gets boys to do things for her when feminine charms fail. Luckily she’s spared, because what Dany says next, cool and collected as you like, is this:

“Yes, but consider this. A s _harknado.”_

Ygritte blinks.

“What the bloody fuck is a sharknado?”

“A tornado. Of sharks.”

A very long moment ensues, in which Ygritte stares at Dany, and Dany stares right back. The alarm on the espresso machine goes off, and the bells above the door jangle to signal a customer walking in. 

“Well,” she finally responds, very seriously. “In that case, I say we’d all be well and truly fucked.”

Dany grins slyly and flips the cover of her textbook closed in triumph before slipping it, along with her notes and pen, away into her bag. Ygritte raises an eyebrow.

“I’ve got to meet Missandei in twenty,” she explains. “Grey stuff.”

“Right. How is she?”

“Missandei?”

Ygritte rolls her eyes. “Yes.”

“She’s fine. It’s fine. More than fine, you know she’s his rock these days. She’s just got to unload at some point, you know?”

“Completely.”

Dany stands, hefting her bag onto her shoulder. “You want to come with?”

“Nah, but give her my love,” she responds, chewing at the end of her straw, her ice coffee long-since drained, and patting her own textbook with an air of fondness. “Marine bio waits for no woman.”

“Nor do certain curly-haired café workers,” Dany points out casually.

“That,” Ygritte says to herself as Dany leaves, “may not be true.”

Ygritte does not do crushes. She does aesthetic appreciation, and she has her targets. The difference, of course, being that the targets are the ones that she appreciates aesthetically enough to want to touch. Grey - still Grace, back then - had outlined this for her once at dinner, and Val and Missandei had nearly peed themselves laughing until their faces were introduced to flying chunks of roast potato. Tormund had tried to lecture all four of them on negatively influencing the younger girls but the sight of him trying to be an actual figure of authority had just resulted in an all-out food fight.

So no, Ygritte doesn’t do crushes, and the sinfully pretty barista at Night’s Watch Tea & Coffee is not a crush. He’s a target. Or he would be if she ever managed to get more than two words out of him that aren’t, “What can I get for you?” and, “Have a nice day.” At first she’d thought it was just aggressive professionalism, but after watching him joking with the lads he works with, Ygritte’s pretty sure he’s just afraid of girls.

In any case, he’s not working now.

Ygritte takes this as a sign from the gods that she’s supposed to be studying for her exams.

 

Three hours and five coffee refills later, Ygritte’s seeing stars and the words on the page are starting to look like little dancing whales more than anything. As she sits back and rubs at her eyes with the heels of her hand, her phone vibrates and she looks down to see a text from Dany. 

_‘???’_

Ygritte frowns and flips open her phone to see no less than twelve texts from Dany within the last forty-five minutes. She and Missandei are going to that film about giant robots punching aliens in the face and would she like to come and the answer is fuck yes, only the movie started three minutes ago and Ygritte needs to see this thing of glory in its entirety so she’s going to have to take a raincheck.

She shoots back a quick response then glances up at the counter and grins. The shift must have changed over at some point. She grabs her empty mug and heads over.

The pretty lad and his curly hair look up at her when she approaches the counter and _gods_ that mouth.

“Refill?” he asks.

“Please.”

She looks around as he busies himself with her drink and notices very suddenly that they’re the only two people in the place. Not surprising for 7:30 on a Sunday evening. Castle Black isn’t exactly a bustling metropolis, and Night’s Watch is far enough away from the university that it’s never exactly crawling with students.

“Slow shift?” she asks when he turns around with her coffee.

He nods and hums the affirmative, but when she starts to pull out a few coins he actually says, “Don’t worry about it.”

“What?”

“You’re here all the time, you and your friend. A couple stags won’t sink us.”

Ygritte nearly drops her wallet in shock.

“Wow.”

“I mean, it’s not that big a - “

“No, not that. Or thanks, I mean. But that. That was two whole sentences. Congratulations.”

The look the pretty barista boy gives her is frighteningly reminiscent of the way Mance looked at her when she and Orell were suspended from college for chaining themselves together on top of the roof in order to protest the local MP’s visit. It’s _are you bloody serious_ , with a dash of mild amusement.

“Thanks,” he says slowly. “I think.”

Ygritte bites her lip between her teeth to keep from smiling too much because he’s actually talking to her and that is just _excellent_. “Don’t get me wrong,” she says. “I didn’t think you were… _slow_ or whatever. You just come off as the silent, brooding type, you know.”

And then he laughs. He actually _laughs_ , and gods it’s glorious. It’s more of a breath-dump than anything, but the corners of his mouth perk up and it’s kind of toothy and if it’s possible his lips are even more beautiful that way than they are set in his usual pout.

“I do know, actually. My sister says I look like a sad puppy half the time.”

“She’s not wrong. Suits you, though.”

“Thanks… again. I guess.”

Pulling the mug of coffee towards her, Ygritte smiles, because gods it would be great if he would do it again, too. He’s back to the pout, though, and he’s watching her almost critically, head cocked slightly to the left, and she can practically see the gears in his head turning.

“What?”

“It’s just. You’re here all the time. Seems weird I don’t know your name is all.”

“Does it?”

“A bit.”

“You trying to ask me something, then?”

He rolls his eyes and her belly does a little flip on itself when he asks, “What’s your name?”

She smiles.

“Ygritte.”

“Ygritte,” he echoes. He’s from further south, but not by much from the sound of it, and she likes the way the guttural notes of her name roll off Northern but soft and elegant on his tongue.

“You’re not from here,” she states.

His eyebrows rise on his face.

“I’m not,” he concedes. “Are you?”

“Yes.”

It’s not really a lie. Not exactly. She was born at the makeshift hospital by the Fist, Ygritte knows that much, and it’s not hard to guess going off that that whatever else her parents might have been, they were miners, and they're long-since dead. She’d had no fantasies as a child of distant wealthy relatives coming to take her away the way some of the other girls had, but growing up with Mance and Tormund had been a more than acceptable substitute.

Castle Black may be something of a steaming shithole of a town, but the university is prestigious as any. It got better ranking than University of King’s Landing last year, anyway. As a result, there’s long been an understanding that any student from the state school that could get themselves into CBU could attend on a free ride. And thank the gods for that. It’s the only way Ygritte and Missandei ever could have managed it. 

“What about you, pretty lad?” she asks, taking a sip of coffee.

His eyes widen.

“Pretty lad?”

“I don’t exactly have anything better to call you, do I?”

“It’s Jon,” he says, going a bit red. “I’m from Winterfell.”

“Alright, then,” she says, biting her bottom lip once more. “So tell me, Jon from Winterfell. It only took about three weeks to get you to talk to me. What’s a girl got to do to get your number?”

 

She doesn’t actually expect him to call. Ygritte’s completely expecting and fully prepared to go back and needle him about not calling - and gods it shouldn’t be so fun but it’s just so easy to get a rise out of him - or to get the fat beardy kid to deliver the message for her. 

Jon, it turns out, is full of surprises

It’s the next morning and she’s got Poli Econ in about twenty minutes and at first she doesn’t recognize the number that pops up on her vibrating phone. Then she notices the area code and grins. 

“Jon from Winterfell,” she greets him, her cheek cradling the phone against her shoulder as she laces up her boots.

Delightfully, he gets right down to it. 

“How d’you feel about Braavosi food?”

“As a general concept?”

She can practically feel him turn red through the speaker.

“More in terms of you and me eating it. Together. Tonight.”

“Are you asking me on a date, Jon from Winterfell?” Ygritte’s got her coat on by now but she barely even registered putting it on and she’s grinning like a fool.

“S’pose I am.”

“S’pose I’m saying yes, then.”

 

Jon’s a funny lad, she’s figured out quite quickly, because he has this thing where doesn’t say much but when he does, it’s right to the point. And the first thing he says to her when they meet in front of the Braavosi restaurant that night - the only one in town, not so shockingly - is, “It’s snow, by the way.”

Ygritte blinks, pulls her coat more tightly around her waist and then looks up at the falling flakes.

“Well, yes,” she says. “I’m not an idiot, you see.”

He stares at her for a second. “No,” he says, “I mean my name. It’s Jon Snow. You keep calling me Jon from Winterfell. Figure you might as well have a proper name if you’re going to keep on like that.”

“Thoughtful of you,” Ygritte grins. _Snow_. She files that, along with the implications, in the back of her mind. “A pleasure to meet you, Jon Snow.” She extends her hand. “Ygritte Wilde.”

He laughs and takes her hand, allowing the initiation of an absurdly formal handshake.

“Shall we?”

Ygritte has never had a boyfriend before, nor has she ever really been on a date. Not one like this, with the restaurant and the sitting across the table and the getting-to-know-you thing. Not with someone she initially just wanted to fuck, anyway, and she finds it charmingly old-fashioned of him. But it’s also the sort of thing she’s done with her friends a million times, and eating Braavosi food with Jon Snow, she finds, is not such a far cry from that. 

She’s aware that she’s doing most of the talking - none of it particularly substantial - but Jon is remarkably easy to be with. He does talk some, though, and she likes hearing about the little things that randomly come up.

He grew up in Winterfell his whole life, and he hates heights with a passion, and he has a bleeding _direwolf._ Ygritte nearly loses her head at that. And he - the wolf - is albino, which is honestly even cooler. Jon’s a student like her, pre-law, and she’s about to rib him on the complete cliché of that when he mentions he’s also studying criminal justice.

“What are you, a total brain, then?”

“Just needed the marks for a scholarship is all.”

“What, your daddy didn’t want to pay for you?” she smirks.

“My dad’s dead, actually,” he responds mildly.

Shit.

There’s a split second where Ygritte wants to apologize, because even if his father _weren’t_ dead, she knows as well as anyone what it means for your surname to be Snow, and that may have been crossing the line a bit, even for her. But Ygritte’s spent twenty years positively loathing anyone who pitied her for being an orphan or a foster kid, so instead she thrusts her chin up a bit and grins in solidarity.

“Yeah? So’s mine.”

So even though she had been more or less trying not to get into it, this is how she ends up telling him about the girl’s home and Mance and Tormund and the rest. Jon, it turns out, actually sort of knows Missandei. They’ve got a Valyrian class together or something.

This is also how she learns about Robb-and-Theon-and-Sansa-and-Arya-and-Bran-and-Rickon-and-Meera-and-Jojen-and-Jeyne and it honestly sounds like there were more kids in and out of Jon’s house growing up than there were in hers. His stepmother’s alright, Jon explains, or tries to be now his dad’s gone, but he’s not going to ask her to pay for his school when she has five other kids to think about. From the sound of it, though, Ygritte thinks Mrs. Stark could probably afford it.

“Stark,” she rolls over her tongue at one point. “Isn’t that a peerage name?”

“Yes,” Jon answers shortly, then asks about her activist work.

 

They end up going to the film about aliens and robots - which, for the record, is _excellent_ \- and walk out of the small cinema thoroughly engaged in a lively discussion about the realistic possibilities of a neural bridge.

“I’m not _saying_ it’s a scientific impossibility - I just mean it’s more akin to magic than anything, really,” Jon says as they turn the street corner.

“Sorry, lad, the position of hot science geek in this conversation has already been filled,” Ygritte smirks, punching him on the arm. “And what’s magic but mad science?”

“I thought magic didn’t exist,” he points out.

“Did you know you can use electromagnets to shrink coins down to a fraction of their original size in less than a second?”

“I didn’t.”

“Or that _ten years ago_ a couple scientists managed to breed a photoluminescent cat in order to better research and counter feline AIDS?”

“Pholuminescent?”

“It glowed in the dark.”

Jon, to his credit, looks terribly impressed. 

“The natural world is full of all manner of wondrous things we haven’t got a better word for than magic,” says Ygritte, staring up at the still-falling snow against the dark backdrop of the northern sky, a small peaceful smile creeping on her face.

When she looks back at him, his brow is furrowed but he’s staring at her as though he hadn’t actually quite seen her before now. Ygritte’s heart twists strangely as he slips his hand into hers and says, “How do you know so much?”

“I don’t have to dedicate my whole life to poli sci, you know. There are more wonders on earth than that.”

“I know.”

“You know nothing, Jon Snow.”

There are snowflakes in his eyelashes when she wraps her arms around his shoulders and kisses him. Jon tastes like coffee and Braavosi spices, and for a split-second Ygritte thinks he’s not going to reciprocate. But then his mouth parts slightly and she captures his bottom lip between her own until he deepens the kiss. Jon’s hand - the one not currently tangled in her own - struggles to free itself from his pocket but soon both are around her waist, pulling her closer into their shared space with unexpected confidence. Ygritte laughs into his mouth, and then he’s sucking on her tongue and his hand’s caught up in her red hair.

A passing car beeps its horn at them and it’s to the catcalls and hollers of a carful of university students that they at last break away. Ygritte’s grinning like an idiot and Jon - well, Jon’s not smiling exactly, but there’s a fire in his eyes and the fingers still tangled in her hair keep her forehead resting against his, the breath from their mouths visibly intermingling in the cold air.

He kisses her again - chaste, this time - and says, “I do know some things.”

 

It’s a little past five in the morning when Ygritte wakes up. It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust to the early morning light and a few moments after that to register where she is. But she’s completely naked, and there’s a white direwolf at the end of the bed, and then a rather damp Jon Snow is walking through the door, wearing nothing but a pair of black sweatpants.

“Do you have any idea what time it is, Jon Snow?” she grumbles, and curls into the blankets.

“About five, I reckon.”

“No. Early. Right now it’s early.”

Jon slides into bed with her, and she scrunches her nose at the damp curls that wisp across her forehead. Gently, he takes her fisted hand in his and brushes kisses one-by-one across her knuckles.

“I have work in an hour,” he says quietly. “Trust me, if I could stay in bed all day with you, I would.”

Ygritte grins at that, remembering the moment last night when they’d lain there, side by side, sweaty and giddy and hearts racing fast after Jon had pulled himself from her. It’s not just anyone you can high-five after particularly excellent sex.

Eyes still heavy with sleep, she runs her fingers through his wet hair, continuing down to trace the line of his jaw down to his lips, and runs her thumb over those as well. That’s another memory, and Ygritte smiles.

“You put that pretty mouth of yours to good use last night,” she says. “S’pose I might forgive you if you did it again.” 

She can practically feel Jon grinning as he kisses down her body, and wonders what she ever did to get so lucky.

 

Ygritte and Dany make it to Night’s Watch after class that morning, and Jon looks half-dead from exhaustion but responds enthusiastically enough when she pulls him toward her to kiss him over the counter.


End file.
